


Liver

by anactoriatalksback



Series: Dunn's Anatomy [1]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Demisexuality, Love Confessions, M/M, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 20:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: He’s just told his COO that he loves him. Which, to be clear, was absolutely not something he’d planned to do, like, in any way, and which is a very bad idea for all sorts of reasons, the first and last being that Richard is…Richard, and Jared….lovely, crazy, sweet Jared……is Jared, but mostly that Richard is Richard.





	Liver

 

_“All agree that the brain and the liver each receive their power of life, natural heat, and breath from the heart, and that each of them is also the starting-point of another faculty which it sends out to the other agents.”_

\- **Avicenna**

Richard knows what the most comforting smell in the world is.

It’s not butter, or freshly-baked bread, or apple pie, or cut grass, or whatever else.

It’s the very precise, brisk, insistent sharpness of Lysol on bathroom tiles, if and only if combined with the ungiving cool of porcelain against his cheek. The smell of – containment. Of an episode receding. Of Richard’s fucking….egesta…..having gone where it should have.

Also the sound of a gentle voice saying something about sensitive digestions and how apparently William Bligh might have been a martyr to distress of this sort and oh have you looked into Ayurveda, Richard, I really think it’s worth exploring, I’d discounted the mediaeval theory of humours when considering your diet but this seems so much more sophisticated.

Richard wonders what Jared’s most comforting smell is.

Probably something specific and charming with a terrifying sting in the tail. Like, the smell of a baby’s head as you rock yourself to and fro under a bed hoping that the neighbourhood coyote doesn’t smell you. Or the smell of mushrooms in autumn forests – they’re comforting because they actually _were_ mushrooms, not the amanita that Jared’s cult was trying to build resistance to. That sort of thing.

Richard hopes Jared likes Lysol and porcelain too. Maybe he’ll ask him. Once he’s. Y'know. Done.

Richard didn’t even know

  1. That there was a chia seed – goji berry cross
  2. Or that it was apparently the new superfood
  3. Or that it was possible to make gluten-free bran muffins with the gochia, or chaiji, or whatever the fuck it’s called
  4. Or that Jared wouldn’t have tried the muffins himself before baking them
  5. Because if he had, he’d have known that that shit did not agree with him
  6. Like, at all.



Anyway, here Jared is, horking up pretty much every meal he’s ever eaten. Richard ran in after him because that telltale stumble was basically the story of his, Richard’s, life, but he’d never seen Jared upchuck before, what if he’s dying, shouldn’t someone, shouldn’t, I mean,

And here Richard is, kinda standing on one leg while Jared heaves and retches, tears running down his cheeks, apologising between every single terrifying convulsion while Richard just…’No, you’re..it’s…good, I….’s at him.

Of course, where Richard _really_ stumbles, he’s realised, is in the whole….Vomit Small Talk arena. His…toilet-side…manner….leaves something to be desired.

‘I love you.’

 _Well, that’s excessive,_ he thinks, I mean he hasn’t done anything to remotely deserve it this time.

Not that Richard _ever_ thinks he deserves it, which is a whole other thing, but. Y’know.

Richard’s about to arrange his features into the standard post-declaration wincing grimace when his brain catches up with his ears.

Which are screeching that it wasn’t Jared who said the words.

And Richard registers Jared, head lifted from the toilet-bowl, staring at him with huge blue saucer eyes.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, right.

Richard waits for the panic to claw its way through his abdomen, and finds that he’s…fine.

Well, not fine, precisely, he’s just told his COO that he loves him. Which, to be clear, was absolutely not something he’d planned to do, like, in any way, and which is a very bad idea for all sorts of reasons, the first and last being that Richard is…Richard, and Jared….lovely, crazy, sweet Jared……is Jared, but mostly that Richard is Richard.

But Richard can see the words crawl across his internal monitor: This Might As Well Happen.

Which…look, honestly this is what happens when you’ve lived so long with a thing that…

Well, look. This is when Richard first consciously realised that he loved Jared.

He’d gone to Jared’s condo, gritting out an apology while Jared stared at him with those soft soft eyes and peals of women’s laughter floating out behind him because he’d left and he’d moved on and Richard was being A Person and letting him. He’d left (Richard had). And then he’d pulled up (Jared had). Jared in his Chevy Volt smiling shyly up at him and holding out a sheet of paper that was supposed to be a job application because Jared’s kind of a drama queen and it should not be as adorable as it is but anyway it wasn’t a job application because what it was, was a letter from Jared to Jared (drama-queen, remember?) and it began ‘Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty.’

Because Jared is a limpid-eyed Oliver Twist who is also fully a vest-wearing suburban dad.

 _Oh, I like you_ , Richard had thought, _you could’ve, you could’ve spared me that, I mean I need you already, isn’t that enough? I_ like _\- like you, goddammit, I love you, I don’t need to be_ fond _of you as well._

And then Richard had thought, _oh_.

He hadn’t panicked then either. After all, he was about to walk the plank, to pull the plug on Pied Piper for once and for all or so he’d thought. He could think about the…other thing….later.

Of course, it had all gotten considerably more exciting than that.

And then Richard hadn’t thought about it, except to internally shrug, because yes, yes he did love Jared (and like him too, argh argh argh), and that wasn’t going to go away, because if Richard had already known that he knew that he loved Jared all that time ago, God alone knows when Richard had actually started _loving_ Jared, right?

It didn’t make a difference, really. Why would it? It would only make a difference if Richard was, y’know, expected to do anything about it.

Which.

Well, that’s kind of…

Look.

Jared fucks, right?

This is…a thing….that Richard now knows.

That Jared fucks.

And Richard…

Doesn’t.

And more to the point, doesn’t really want to.

 _It’s a green bottle, Richard doesn’t know what it used to hold, but it’s empty now, and the light flashes on it, and Tracy Spengler whispers that Janice Crosby_ likes _-likes him and there she is, right now, brown hair failing over her face, she’s cute, Richard thinks, she’s pretty, and she looks up and catches Richard’s eyes on hers, and she blushes and looks away, and Richard thinks that if he stares at the bottle, lurching on its axis, if he concentrates, then surely it’ll come, it’ll all come rushing back up, what is his alimentary canal good for if not antiperistalsis, but no, no, turns out his stomach’s good for literally nothing, it’s like a, like a tranquil lake in there, like a fucking millpond._

‘Richard?’

 _They’re college roommates, in the movie, Kyle and Brad are college rommmates, shiny empty eyes and muscles bunching under orange poreless skin, and Kyle or Brad is moaning_ aha-ah-ah _while Brad or Kyle’s ass flexes, and Richard is touching himself, dully, dutifully, it’s friction, that’s all it is, and the towel on the floor in the video is green now and Richard’s pretty sure it was violet in the previous shot, and he rewinds to make sure, and yep, yep, he’s gonna have to leave a comment._

‘Richard, is everything okay?’

Jared is rising, slowly, to his feet, eyes on Richard. He looks….startled, thinks Richard. Like a fawn in the woods. Like a baby sparrow. Jared always makes Richard think of baby animals, all eyes and eyelashes and tiny movements of the head and oh what a lovely web you have there mister spider.

‘Richard, did you…’

Richard thinks for a minute of denying what he said. Pretending it was something else. ‘I fluff you, Jared’? ‘I huff you’? ‘I puff you’? ‘I blow your fucking house down, Jared’?

And then he sighs and says ‘I love you. I mean I’m. In love. With you.’

 

Jared’s eyes widen even more, like how is that even possible, even in Jared’s absurd anime face, he’s basically 75% eyes now, and like a fingertip’s length of pink in his thin cheeks, and he’s, he’s

 _Lovely,_ thinks Richard, in helpless despair _, oh lovely, lovely, what the fuck am I meant to do with you, what the fuck do people_ do _with lovely things._

 _They keep them on a high shelf,_ thinks Richard, _behind glass, that’s what they do, that’s what I_ should _do, that’s what I could’ve done, but then I opened my big stupid mouth. Idiot, idiot,_ idiot _._

Jared’s taking a step towards him, a wavering, incredulous smile on his lips. ‘Richard, I - ’

‘We can’t’, says Richard, he snaps, he has to, and Jared recoils. Richard swallows ‘I – I’m sorry, I didn’t - ’

‘No’, says Jared, and of course, of course, of course Jared’s about to get ahead of this, throw himself on the landmine, shove Richard away from the gun he fucking fired himself, of course he is, ‘No, I – I understand, Richard, we can’t, workplace romances, we have Pied Piper to think of, we shouldn’t, _I_ shouldn’t - ’ and he takes a careful breath, squaring his skinny shoulders, ‘I – Richard, please accept my apologies, I shouldn’t have - ’

‘Stop’, says Richard, because it’s painful, it’s horrible, it’s grotesque to watch Jared do the, the fucking Martyr Tapdance and it also makes Richard fall more and more fucking embarrassingly ass-deep in love with him with every word, which is just irresponsible at this point, honestly, ‘I didn’t – that’s not why. I.’ Richard scrubs his hand over his face. ‘Jared, I – sex. I don’t. It’s never really.’

_‘Mrs Bighetti, can I have a…drink of water?’_

_‘Of course, honey, just help yourself.’_

_Holding his hand under the spray, following the swirl with his eyes in the sink, just need it to be the right temperature, Mrs Bighetti, I, I, I gotta, a sore throat, wouldn’t wanna…_

_‘Of course, Richard. What are they up to down there?’_

_Giggling, closets, Richard’s offered to operate the stopwatch but no apparently everyone’s gotta play._

_Richard shrugs as he takes a careful sip of his water._

_‘What, what, what are you reading, Mrs Bighetti?’_

Jared’s eyes widen, briefly, then he puts his head to one side. ‘And Liz?’

Richard winces. _She’d lunged at him, down there, lie there, lift this, touch this, it was flattering, right, it had to be, she’s pretty, there was a relief in it, a soul satisfaction in being useful, go there, do this, yes ma’am, no ma’am, three bags full ma’am, a tool, an instrument, a pretext, it was comforting, this is what it’s like, Hendricks, but when she’d taken off her bra she’d looked at him, eyes expectant, and Richard had felt it, the flare of rage, no, no, this wasn’t part of the deal, I was playing along, you had me, fucking, fucking rent-free, you never said I had to, to be_ involved _._

_Gulp, he’d said, enunciating clearly. G-U-L-P. Fuck you._

Richard shrugs. Raises his head to look at Jared. ‘We – I should never have - ’

‘Richard’, says Jared on an indulgent outward breath, ‘oh, Richard, you – you _goose_. How could you ever think I could - ’

And he’s in front of Richard, gentle hand on his shoulder, eyes shining, smiling so hard it looks like the top half of his face will slide clean off.

‘Richard’, he says, ‘Captain, will you…’, he licks his lips, delicately, just the tip of his tongue, ‘will you honour me?’

‘I’m not’, says Richard, ‘please, Jared, I’m, you don’t, you’re not listening, you - ’

‘Richard’, says Jared, ‘I don’t need sex. I wore a chastity belt at Hooli for years, honestly I barely noticed, I - ’

‘Stop it’, says Richard, because these stories always make him want to scream till he blacks out, ‘stop it. This. See, this, Jared. This. This doesn’t. You, you need to. Ask for what you. You - ’

‘You’, says Jared simply, ‘I want you.’

‘You _have_ me’, shouts Richard – he has to, because Jared says shit like that, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, and Richard can’t, he can’t, his heart’s squeezed itself into the size of a pin, he can’t – ‘that isn’t. Fuck. Jared. That isn’t. New. Information.’

Jared blinks. ‘It – it was new to me, Richard.’

‘Right’, says Richard. ‘Right. I. Yeah. Right. But.’ He takes in a deep breath. ‘you should. Want. More.’

Jared’s shaking his head. ‘Richard, you mustn’t think - ’

‘You should have’ says Richard, ‘ _everything_.’

Jared’s opened his mouth, but he shuts it at this point, because Richard’s thrown, like, his entire physical mass behind the word. He looks at Richard carefully and says ‘Richard, you mustn’t feel….ashamed….of…of who you are, because….’

‘I’m not’, says Richard, which isn’t true, but he knows the theory, at least some of it, he knows, and one day he’ll know it properly, like he’ll feel it, and it’s nice but Jared doesn’t need to, to, it isn’t that.

‘Richard?’ says Jared. ‘Out of interest, do you – do you want to kiss me?’

‘Yes’, says Richard. ‘I mean – not right – when you’ve, like after you’ve rinsed out the, but - ’

What the fuck are you doing, Hendricks.

Because that’s…part of it, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easier if, if the answer were ‘no’? Or even if the answer were ‘yes, but no more’? Like, definitively?

Wouldn’t it be easier if Richard didn’t….

Like, sometimes when Jared’s fingers are wrapped around a tea-mug and Richard’s heart squeezes and there’s also a shiver a little flip a little flicker that Richard doesn’t know what to do with because then there’s a crisis there’s always a crisis and the flicker’s buried under a shitstorm tsunami and one day Richard thinks it’ll just…fucking…flicker itself out without ever…flaming? Do flickers flame?

It would be easier, thinks Richard, if Jared weren’t ready – eagerly, in a fucking…blind Bacchanalian ecstasy of self-sacrifice – to put up. Make do. Wait. Wait indefinitely for that phantom will o’the wisp flicker.

It would be easier.

‘Richard’, says Jared, ‘I want – darling, I want nothing from you that you aren’t ready for.’

Richard shivers. Lets his eyes close as Jared’s fingers brush, gently, along his cheek. Feels his heart clamp, painfully. Holds his breath as he waits for the…thing, the heat, the little….

The flicker.

There it is.

Every time, though, every time he watches for it, and every time he thinks it may not answer.

And one day – one day it might not.

And if it doesn’t answer for Jared….

It’s – humiliating – he thinks, to realise that you’ve been clutching this…Prince Charming fantasy…like a fucking teddy bear, a fucking _blankie_.

Jared will jump-start me. Jared will fix me. Jared will, will fucking breathe on my dick and heal me.

And it’s unfair, it’s unfair, of course it’s unfair, what a burden, what a fucking imposition.

But – in the confines of Richard’s skull, somewhere cool and dark and at the bottom of winding spiral stairways – what a comfort. Such sweetness, such balm to think that the phlebotinum, the McGuffin, is there, within reach, if Richard only – which he would never do, of course, but if he did….

Schrodinger’s Boner Elixir.

And then of course Richard had to open his big fat mouth and Jared had to offer – to insist – on opening the box and collapsing the waveform.

Because it doesn’t, of course it doesn’t work like that, there are no fucking…magic Sex Beans that will make Richard’s beanstalk shoot through the clouds and no Richard doesn’t know what he’s talking about either this metaphor got away from him basically immediately.

It doesn’t work like that, and Jared’s just gonna….try to SWOT and Scrum and Porter’s Five Forces his way through Richard’s clusterfuck of a relationship with his body, and then – inevitably – someone will come along who’ll, who’ll fucking _worship_ Jared’s body the way it _should_ be worshipped, and then Richard will just…fucking slink back into his own resentful uncooperative skin but it’ll be 10000000 times worse because at least before he didn’t know what Jared’s lips felt like.

Which….he still doesn’t know.

Richard turns his head so his lips brush against Jared’s hand. Watches Jared’s eyelids flutter.

Waits for the flicker, please, please, please….

And there it is.

Richard lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.

‘I also like you’, he says.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to the lovely and talented Master of Beef (AKA ladiesloveduranduran), Neurofancier and joycecarolnotes for looking over this gunk.
> 
> My tumblr handle is itsevidentvery, if you'd like to come yell with me there.


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